adlong.

_Self-Poise_. All this may be very true, but what is the use of all this
straining? Far-sought is dear-bought. When we know that all is in each,
and that the ordinary contains the extraordinary, why should we play the
baby, and insist upon having the moon for a toy when a tin dish will do
as well. Our deep ignorance is a chasm that we can only fill up by
degrees, but the commonest rubbish will help us as well as shred silk.
The God Brahma, while on earth, was set to fill up a valley, but he had
only a basket given him in which to fetch earth for this purpose; so is
it with us all. No leaps, no starts will avail us, by patient
crystallization alone the equal temper of wisdom is attainable. Sit at
home and the spirit-world will look in at your window with moonlit
eyes; run out to find it, and rainbow and golden cup will have vanished
and left you the beggarly child you were. The better part of wisdom is a
sublime prudence, a pure and patient truth that will receive nothing it
is not sure it can permanently lay to heart. Of our study there should
be in proportion two-thirds of rejection to one of acceptance. And, amid
the manifold infatuations and illusions of this world of emotion, a
being capable of clear intelligence can do no better service than to
hold himself upright, avoid nonsense, and do what chores lie in his way,
acknowledging every moment that primal truth, which no fact exhibits,
nor, if pressed by too warm a hope, will even indicate. I think, indeed,
it is part of our lesson to give a formal consent to what is farcical,
and to pick up our living and our virtue amid what is so ridiculous,
hardly deigning a smile, and certainly not vexed. The work is done
through all, if not by every one.

_Free Hope._ Thou art greatly wise, my friend, and ever respected by me,
yet I find not in your theory or your scope, room enough for the lyric
inspirations, or the mysterious whispers of life. To me it seems that it
is madder never to abandon oneself, than often to be infatuated; better
to be wounded, a captive, and a slave, than always to walk in armor. As
to magnetism, that is only a matter of fancy. You sometimes need just
such a field in which to wander vagrant, and if it bear a higher name,
yet it may be that, in last result, the trance of Pythagoras might be
classed with the more infantine transports of the Seeress of Prevorst.

What is done interests me more than what is thought and supposed. Every
fact is